Season’s Greetings with Penguin(s)!

Today we’ve made these Christmas cards with penguins on!

We used:

Red card, 2 sheets of A4 (but you could use a smaller piece, and then glue it onto a larger white card)

Glitter glue pens in gold, copper and red

Black and white pieces of felt

Orange card

Googly eyes

We also used pens, scissors, pva glue and cotton buds.

We made these cards in three sessions, allowing drying time for glue/glitter glue. First step was to spread glitter glue on the red card. Penguin loved the squeeeezing, but was less excited about spreading the sticky stuff with his hands. I did have some brushes on hand as back-up, but he eventually braved it and used his fingers.

While the backgrounds were drying, I prepared the pieces of felt by drawing some egg shapes: Bigger ones on the black felt (using a white pencil) and smaller ones on the white (using a coloured pencil). Although we were only planning to make one penguin each, I drew some extra egg shapes so that we’d be prepared if mistakes were made when cutting them out.

Cutting these shapes in felt was no easy task for Penguin, but I think it went quite well anyway, and it was certainly great practice!

After cutting the felt pieces needed, we went on to cut out beaks and feet in orange card. We then glued all the bits together, to make our little penguins!

Cotton buds were used for applying small blobs of glue for the eyes, beaks and feet.

We then had to allow for the penguins to dry, before glueing them onto our glittery red backgrounds, which we first folded in half. My reason for making the penguins separately before attaching them to the cards is to minimize the risk of ‘fatal’ mistakes along the way. Keeping things quite simple, avoiding unnecessary frustration or upset, is key in making these activities enjoyable for us.